Cyrus Christie seems to have cracked the routine now. From his home in Surrey to Swansea, the right-back has clocked up the miles this past season as he flits between his football and baby daughter, Amaya.
The season started with isolation at Fulham and his partner being taken to hospital in September but ends with stability and optimism, even if his footballing future, with his contract up at Craven Cottage, is undecided.
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He has rediscovered his footballing confidence again in south Wales. The Republic of Ireland international, 29, spent the second half of the season on loan with Swansea City, having been overlooked at Fulham after not finding a summer route out.
He started every game for which he was available at Swansea and posted good numbers too, with five assists and three goals — his best individual return for goal involvements in a season from 22 games.
“It’s been a really enjoyable six months, to get out there and play football,” he says. “I feel like I’ve been a main cog in this team. I didn’t want the season to end.”
Christie was pleased just to get out of Fulham in the end. He spent the 2020-21 season on loan at Nottingham Forest, making 44 league appearances, and had hoped to take advantage of a blank slate after Marco Silva’s appointment. That was not to be.
“It was frustrating knowing that you have to train on your own sometimes” he says. “There were days where they wanted me to come in, when no one was in the building and I wasn’t allowed to train with the first team. Thankfully (Fulham under-23s manager) Steve Wigley let me play in a couple of under-23s games to tick over. An opportunity didn’t pop up in the summer, so I had to be patient. I kept my sanity, which was very tough over the course of that six months.
“The manager has a job to do. That’s football, I understand that and I came in every day, I smiled, I carried on, if they needed me to train, I trained well. I was always ready to play. I didn’t want to come in and upset a team or a dressing room.“
There was a lot to deal with off the field too. His partner, Nahide, was rushed to hospital in September and their daughter, Amaya, was born prematurely, and spent time in intensive care. “Me not getting out on a summer, maybe it was just a sign, with my daughter being been in the ICU for so long,” he says. “If I had had moved somewhere, then maybe I wouldn’t have been around for that.”
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“She is good as gold. It’s the biggest blessing ever, really. As much as they are your kids, they end up being your teachers as well. You learn so much from them. She wakes up happy every day. You feel bad sometimes if you wake up miserable. It’s truly amazing.”
Going to Swansea, then, was about rediscovering his joy in his work. Christie says he “made sacrifices” to move, including on salary. “It was just finding happiness again,” he says. “My family don’t want to see me down, or unhappy. For any footballer, they should always go somewhere where they feel valued. That’s where you’re going to play your best football.”
Christie has been grateful for the flexibility of his boss, Russell Martin, allowing him to get between home and south Wales. “He showed me everything, and went into detail, not many other managers have done that.” His Fulham team-mates had also been impressed by Swansea when they visited Craven Cottage in September, and the move made sense.
He stepped into the shoes left by Ethan Laird, recalled by Manchester United to go to Bournemouth, and slotted in as a wing-back, a position he has not played much in. He has enjoyed Martin’s possession-based style of play too. “It’s good, because you’re able to influence a lot of the other teams in the way that you play,” he says. “They’re quite scared because maybe they’ve never seen it before, in how we do it. Some games can be a bit of cat and mouse.
“The way that we play, the players just know that there’s so much more to come from each of us.”
Swansea went nine games unbeaten towards the end of the season and Christie says he can see what Martin is trying to build. The question now is whether he will be part of the project going forward.
“I fully bought into it,” he says. “I’d love to stay. But you know, I can’t do much until there’s an offer. The ball’s in their court. Other opportunities are presenting themselves now as well. I’m not silly enough or naive enough to just put all my eggs in one basket.”
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With his contract expiring, this summer will call time on his Fulham career after four years. It has not always been easy.
“Fulham never saw the best of me — I was never really given a chance to show what I’m capable of,” says Christie. “When I did get an opportunity, I was then back on the bench for maybe four or five games. It’s tough when you get no momentum.”
Christie joined Fulham in January 2018, and had to bide his time due to the form of Ryan Fredericks. After promotion, there were summer changes and the team was unsettled. “I feel a lot of the lads that got the team promoted kind of got neglected a bit,” he says. “But it was the same for everyone, chopping and changing all the time, there was no real stability.”
He was in and out of Fulham’s Championship side too the following year. There were some high points, such as his important goal against Queens Park Rangers during Project Restart. It was a winner that helped Fulham surge to promotion via the play-offs.
“It was great,” he says. “It was a rival game as well and it would have been nice if the fans were there. That would have been great. Maybe they would have taken to me a lot better.”
Christie’s relationship with supporters was not always warm. One incident that hurt Christie occurred during a match against Barnsley, in August 2019, where his sister was allegedly assaulted and racially abused by a Fulham fan and his wife. A fan was given an indefinite ban by the club, while a man was summonsed to court in connection with the case in January 2020, but the charges were later dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
“It’s tough when something like that happens, especially when your family go to most of the games,” he says. “After that, they didn’t really want to come.
“The most annoying thing was that a lot of people were messaging, and talking about it, and obviously everyone has their own theories, and they’re accusing you of lying. It was frustrating as I knew all the details.
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“The charges were dropped by the CPS, which we always probably knew was going to happen. But Fulham were great dealing with it and the ban. It was frustrating, because for maybe a year, I was just taking all sorts of abuse, and my sister’s getting abused. That was tough.
“I had to stay silent and bite my tongue. Other people had to as well. It happened in the family section, there was a lot of family and friends from the team that saw it all very clearly. Even people that worked for the club. At that time, it felt like their voice was a bit more powerful. Because they were able to speak freely.”
Christie has done a lot to help others during his career as an outspoken voice against racism within sport and wider society, as well as through his charity work. Last year, he was named on the 2021 Football Black List, which recognises the most influential individuals from the black community in the UK working within football.
He is committed to helping the lives of young people in Coventry, where he grew up, by providing opportunities for those from less privileged backgrounds. He channels this through the Cyrus Christie Foundation.
“My plan was always to get it to a point where it becomes a scholarship foundation to give people the opportunity to create something for themselves,” he says.
“It’s also just to show people that you don’t have to (fit) the narrative when you’re coming from the underprivileged backgrounds. That the only way to get out isn’t just by being a sports person, an athlete or a singer.
“Sometimes being in that crowd and in that environment, you end up being the product of your environment, which can be tough and not many people get out. It is about providing the opportunities, the right lanes for them to get out and explore, and to see what what they can be.”
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Christie’s future, then, will depend a lot on family, and he has more things to consider now. Options are materialising, with clubs said to have looked at him including Watford and Forest, and two clubs in Turkey.
“I can reach the Premier League again, I want to get back there,” he says. “It didn’t go according to plan last time but you can’t be scared of going back there.
“I’m in a good place, physically and mentally doing really well. I feel feel fit, I’d love to be in somewhere and get a full pre-season. Now it’s time to kick on.”
(Top photo: Athena Pictures/Getty Images)